


Bloodbuzz

by zonophone



Category: Gintama
Genre: F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:00:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5002177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zonophone/pseuds/zonophone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They met when the sun was sinking, he looked so young, younger than her. Kondou smiled too widely, for all of them, and her brother ran off. She hesitated before running after him and a twig broke off of the large tree in the garden and she stepped on it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloodbuzz

They met when the sun was sinking, he looked so young, younger than her. Kondou smiled too widely, for all of them, and her brother ran off. She hesitated before running after him and a twig broke off of the large tree in the garden and she stepped on it.

His hair swayed behind him when he walked, a ponytail long and thin and silky and she wondered what it would feel like to touch when he dragged her brother off with him.

He always wore bandages.

She realised one night that she loved him when her brother was missing and he confessed to have tied him up in the mountains because it was her brother's fault he'd filled up the gas tank of a Masserati with mayonnaise, and all that mayonnaise had gone to waste. She realised that night that she loved him because while she ran to the mountains she didn't worry about her brother as if she knew he'd never really hurt him. (She was wrong.)

He always wore bandages and changed them himself and she offered once or twice and he declined with loud anger but she laughed.

He looked small and thin next to Kondou and one time she caught him smiling at Kondou and she was sure Kondou couldn't see it. She spent the rest of the day in bed wondering why her illness felt too much like empathy right then.

They drank mugicha under the eaves of the doujo in the moon light and she watched fireflies dance above them and when he turned his face to catch sight of the one escaping she didn't touch his swaying thin long ponytail and the breeze made them shiver.

He quarreled with her brother often and she watched them with a smile while Kondou worried and intervened, all efforts to stop them, and when he yanked at his hair her skin prickled and her smile wavered for too long.

She spilled Tabasco sauce on her pink kimono and he was startled and his hands were shaking and she would've posed hers on his but she had to cover her mouth, her body trembled with all the coughing, and he didn't pose his shaking hand on her back so she tried smiling at him but he frowned with concern. He looked so young.

They sat together on the porch, Kondou's laughter echoed somewhere, the name of her brother with it, and she turned to him, watched him close his eyes, watched him slip away into a dream, bandages covering his hands, and it would've been so easy to touch his hair. She wondered how much further he'd slip when he woke.

There was good weather that day, when they all left her. She wasn't allowed a rainy, cloudy one and the sky was orange before nightfall, but it was beautiful so she was grateful. He just walked away, his ponytail swaying behind him, and she watched in silence, cursed the smile on her lips that thought at least Kondou would have him by his side.

In a letter she learned he'd cut his hair, her brother didn't specify, and his addiction to smoking was only getting worse. It was an early grave for him, her brother said, hopefully, and she wished she could reproach him but she knew he didn't mean it. Now she would never know what it felt like on her fingers, tried to feel it in memories, but it was always Kondou's hand, not hers, threaded in that silky long darkness.

One of her neighbors had her over one evening and spoke of someone else in a certain way and, heady with conversation that tired her too much already, she headed back home thinking of old flames and wondered what it would be like to be reckless enough to smoke, the lingering effects of a fire that never burnt. She coughed for what seemed like hours before any sleep came.

When she met that man, a merchant, she trailed in the snow for a good while behind him and nothing ached and there were no pangs. She combed a hand through that man's hair at his insistence and she shook her head because she never would've otherwise. She drank sweet sake with that man but a coughing fit ended the evening early and that man left her behind and she didn't even notice because she was too busy staring at one of the lamps outside her window, from inside the futon, trying not to think about him slipping away into sleep beside her and wondering how much time she had left knowing it was too little. Kondou had come that day to wake him up and carry him home and she'd nodded to herself because that too she had known.

He still looks young, younger than her, with his short hair and fitted uniform and smoke lingering behind him at every step and he doesn't stop by but there's something about her brother's best friend that soothes her skin, her skin that's prickling all over even though she's used to the crackers.

She has to worry about her brother, and certain words to speak to him, but while Kondou's there to say good bye as she lies on the hospital bed she allows herself at least the privilege of holding onto his hand and thinking how it might've felt to stroke that hair, to continue stroking it well after she's gone and she smiles with the kind of empathic happiness she'd felt once years ago when he smiled at Kondou and Kondou didn't see.

 

**Author's Note:**

> the national's songs all the way through


End file.
